
IHE LATE MR. KATTERBY 



MAURICE LAZAR 




Copyiight N:'___1_^_l5| 

CflBfRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE LATE 
MR. KATTERBY 



THE LATE 

MR. KATTERBY 



A MONOGRAPH 
BY 

MAURICE LAZAR 



My hand I can givCj willingly enough, but my 
mind I grudge: and it is my mind which Convention 
would seal for her own with a tall hat. 

— John Eglinton 



WALTER M. HILL 

22 EAST WASHINGTON STREET 
CHICAGO 



This edition is limited 
to two hundred copies 
of which this book is 
No 



^'*%a>^ 



Copyright 1919 
BY Maurice Lazar 



All rights reserved 



THE TORCH PRESS 
CEDAR RAPIDS. IOWA 



^cu i3 i;jj9 



iCi.A559023 



TO 
WALTER M. HILL 



INTRODUCTION 

Many readers of this commemorative essay will 
remember that when Benjamin Katterby died human 
beings everywhere mechanically abandoned their pur- 
suits to contemplate his departure. A uniform 
dejection prevailed throughout the world. The man 
had done so much for the little place and its in- 
habitants, had so highly dignified human history 
for the last twenty-five years, that his death was 
deplored in intelligent human circles. So that this 
indiscreet biographical work, a tribute to the genius 
that evolved the Katter-Scatter pill and amplified 
the digestive powers of the stomach, may interest a 
few persons. Especially those who ponder the ex- 
periences of life. 

How the late Mr. Katterby responded to the 
forces that comprised his environment and his 
characteristics I have not told in detail. A man's 
mode of living is familiar enough to most of us. 
What he does matters hardly as much as how he does 
things. The manner, not the matter, charms us. 
And bearing in mind the tendency of readers to 
dwell fondly on the relatively significant pages and 



8 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

skip the leaves that make the few interesting parts 
possible, the present biographer has concerned him- 
self mainly with what he regards as Katterby's most 
interesting exploits. Possibly future historians will 
do more for him than has been done here. 

Katterby had keen insight. From many points of 
view he was uncommonly expressive. I recall de- 
lightful conversations with him even as I write, and 
as I put down the gravely uttered tenets of his 
philosophy I regret I cannot enhance them with 
an account of his inflections and mannerisms: 

"I suspect the motives of philanthropists, beggars, 
capitalists and wage-earners, reactionaries and radi- 
cals. I can not trust him who is one or the other. 
No person can be sensitive to the forces of existence 
and remain classifiable. What I have learned of 
the mammals we typify as curiously as we do leads 
me to hold this belief. Essentially, man is a bifur- 
cated atom, powerless to arrange the details of his 
existence. Our separate piping Pans have little 
social significance. We are all dependent particles 
of the entire protoplast." 

I quote from several letters written by Katterby: 

"Intelligent men and women cherish no fixed con- 
ceptions; they are receptive, on the contrary, to the 
variable manifestations of human intercourse. 
Would it not be wise for us all to take a more per- 
sonal and sincere interest in opportunities for social 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 9 

intercourse than we have taken in the past? I 
mean, specifically, to endow with our individual 
energies the collective life of the community we 
compose .... 

"In exploiting the Katter-Scatter pill, I ap- 
pealed to the public in terms that spelt its lighter, 
gayer moods. I studied the various amusements 
our civilization has forced us to fashion; by observ- 
ing the people who were relishing their pleasures I 
learned how to attract them; and in this way did 
I realize the profound distinction between the 
appetites of the average human being and those of 
the socially refined creature .... 

"My progress, let me use the erroneous term, 
has been very ordinary. No secret, no mystery. 
Of course, there were many obstacles. But I was 
persistent. My unscrupulousness was equalled only 
by my energy. In time I became a member of that 
small band of men whose potential intelligence and 
social power really determine all the rules for people 
like you, poor chap." 

This new Democritus invariably laughed when I 
reproached him for cherishing his "detachments" 
even when deeply concerned by some social inci- 
dent. "You never let go of your philosophical 
yardstick," I said. "An emotional characteris- 
tic—" 

And he said : "I should become helpless had I to be 



lo THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

deprived of that cerebral faculty you classify as an 
instinct. For that matter, all instincts are the 
sparks that fly from the clashing of matter against 
matter. So that my philosophical yardstick, or my 
instinct, or my sparks, expresses my consciousness of 
those forces that are not my own forces, and are 
therefore antagonistic forces. I can no more help 
being 'detached,' as you put it, than you can of 
commenting on the peculiarity. So why distin- 
guish between the sources of possibly variable, but 
probably similar, human manifestations? Really, 
they are all the same: there is nothing to distin- 
guish. 

"I get from life a great diversion: the interests 
that comprise my mental existence. I enjoy apply- 
ing my pathetic conception of any given universal 
dimension to any given social fact. Not that the 
recurrent spectacle of human imbecility exhilarates 
me. It does no such thing; nor does it depress m.e. 
It simply is. And my knowledge of this historically 
familiar condition tends to free my mind for the 
pleasurable contemplation of the life about me. As 
for my tendency to speculate about this and that, I 
wish to state that for me it is not merely stimulating 
to philosophize about things, but imperative; as im- 
perative as is eating, or sleeping, or drinking 

"We all crave sensations. Exaggerations of or- 
dinarily familiar objects fetch us irresistibly. Well 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY ii 

then, name for me a greater stimulus to life than 
contemplation of life. What so invigorating? A 
keener illusion than his mentality the human being 
may never know. But I'm not sure of that. I'm 
not sure of anything. Not even of not being sure.'* 
I think of all this novi^. The wisdom of one 
age provides its successor with platitudes. Thinking 
must seem an illusory cerebral activity, even to 
moralists. Kisses charitably bestowed must lack 
charm, and men and women still develop intima- 
cies in keeping with the traditions. So ? 

Chicago, 1 919 

Lazar 



CHAPTER I 

Katterby began as an institution with the hurri- 
cane of March, 1888, which dismantled the dam 
across the Sacaston River and helped it to flow 
over the lower banks and set the town of Sacaston 
afloat. The newspaper reporter who was dispatched 
from Chicago to immortalize the disaster composed 
a remarkable description * of it. Apparently he 
possessed verbal powers of a kind; maybe today he 
is wealthy and the respected author of innumerable 
literary masterpieces. But it is a fact that the storm 
destroyed a number of men, women, children and 
beasts, and deprived many citizens of certain essen- 
tial comforts. Very trying w^as the experience of 
Adam Buder, locally eminent Doctor of Medicine, 
Chiropodist, and Veterinary Surgeon, who sub- 

* The frantic efforts of the panic stricken townsmen to 
stem the onrushing waters were made negligible by the 
wind, which had seized the freight depot in its howling 
jaws and spat it out again a mess. Telegraph poles were 
laid low, as were also a number of the houses. Soon the 
town became an assemblage of roofs, floating timbers, 
pieces of furniture and unmoored cottages. For three 
days the townfolk were confined to their homes, or what 
had been left of them, while the wind tore around build- 
ings and whistled through jagged walls and into chim- 
neys. Now and then it derisively blew great mouthsful 
of water from the streets over roofs and through shattered 



14 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

sequently involved Katterby in the manufacture of 
Katter-Scatter pills. I quote from the latter's 
diary: 

"Adam Buder was fat and shortlegged. He 
panted when he stooped to inspect a horse's legs. For 
years he had suffered from some stomach ailment, 
and had bought and tried in turn every patented 
medicament which I sold in the old drugstore. When 
he shouted my name early the third day after the 
storm I suspected he was in trouble. I hurried to 
the window of the attic to which we had been 
driven by the flood and saw Adam sitting in a boat. 
A sour look was on his face, and he cried miser- 
ably: 'Say, Katterby, I feel awful; fix me up quick, 
will you, like a good chap?' 

"By this time most of the drugs downstairs were 
soaked through and through. The water was at 
least three feet high. My wife was sick in bed, and 

windows. It puffed out of sight objects that for years had 
identified Sacaston to visitors: the hitchingpost, for in- 
stance, Harold Fisher (champion whiskey drinker) and 
his dog Hal, Jr. 

People didn't miss the dog so much, nor did they think 
in definite terms of Harold. Most of them were busy 
transferring bedding and food supplies from the lower to 
the upper floors of the houses. On the third day a few 
venturesome citizens got into boats and rowed through 
the streets. — From a Chicago newspaper of March ii, 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 15 

little Margaret would surely cry if she were left 
alone and annoy her mother. I yelled to Adam to 
hang on while I hunted up some of the cascara 
sagrada I had prepared for Jackson's cattle.* The 
moment I ran downstairs little Margaret began to 
cry and the sound of the splashing in the store must 
have frightened her and her mother. But I got hold 
of a few pieces of the cascara and hurried back to 
the attic. Adam seemed to be suffering. He was 
shivering and sweating and too far gone, he feebly 
said, to do much for himself. Of course there was 
no way of getting him into the house, and he wasn't 
able to climb up to us along the wall. So I threw 
the paper covered slices of the cascara into his boat 
and told him to row no matter how much he would 
suffer. He said something I couldn^t catch about 
having vertigo, but he plied the oars desperately 
enough and the last I saw of him that day he was 
rowing steadily toward his cottage, a short distance 
back of the town^s business section. 

"A week later, when the flood had receded so that 
you could safely wade through the streets, Doc Bu- 

* Unusual as it is for a druggist to prepare the Cali- 
fornia buckthorn bark, Katterby had to keep a supply on 
hand for Jackson's cattle, which stagnated when locked 
up in bad weather. From' this supply came relief to 
Adam Buder, Doctor of Medicine, Chiropodist, and Vet- 
erinary Surgeon. 



i6 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

der splashed up to the store in hipboots. 'Believe 
me you fixed me up right/ he said. He outlined a 
plan to exploit the cascara. He was enthusiastic. 
'Pills made of what you gave me would be the 
scatterers . . .'he said. The word fascinated 
me: Katterby's Scatterers. Katter . . . scat- 
ter. Katter-Scatter, by George! . . . That's 
how the name was evolved. 

"Doc helped to get things started. Mrs. Katterby 
was confined at the time, getting ready to have our 
second little girl, Elizabeth, and I had my hands full. 
People weren't interested in anything but repairing 
the damage caused by the storm, and the problem 
of creating a fund for the construction of a new 
dam across the Sacaston River disturbed the public 
consciousness. 

''The weekly newspaper wanted advertisements 
from storekeepers in town and I inserted a notice 
that attracted attention. In a small town, no 
matter what opinion prevails publicly, an associa- 
tion of familiar and historical (and therefore im- 
pressive) facts immediately distracts people. The 
combination worked well in my first advertisement, 
which included a portrait that purported to show 
the heavily lined features of Ponce de Leon, and an 
arrangement of this text: 'The Intrepid Old Vo\- 
ager would not have sought in vain for the Elixir 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 17 

of Youth had he lived Today Have YOU tried 

our Katter-Scatter pills?' 

''Customers asked for samples. But no samples 
were given away. Soon there were many sales daily." 

Katterby became keenly interested in his pills. He 
referred to them often in conversation. He mailed 
specimen packets to noted chemists and other men 
of science; to lawyers, politicians, prizefighters and 
literary men. He advertised the pills in all the news- 
papers of Sacaston County. The fame of the pro- 
duct spread. Druggists, soever distastefully, were 
obliged to buy the Katter-Scatter pills. Before the 
end of that year Katterby had to take the iron 
foundry near the rebuilt Sacaston dam and con- 
verted it into a drugmill in order to manufacture 
sufficient quantities of the pills. He deserted his 
pharmacy to acquire wealth by the distribution of 
his cure-all for the world's stomach. 

Soon after his second daughter was born, Katter- 
by was asked to address the people of Sacaston on the 
desirability of reelecting Mai^or Thomas Trent, the 
saloonkeeper. The honor was extended to him by 
the mayor, but its sincerity was not to be questioned. 
Katterby accepted and a fortnight later — to an 
audience that packed the Town Hall — he comment- 
ed cheerfully on Trent's virtues. On this diverting 
topic he talked for fully ten minutes, and for the 
remaining hour and a half only too modestly ex- 



1 8 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

tolled the virtues of his pills. His speech created 
a furore. Trent was again elected mayor of Sacas- 
ton. People bought larger quantities of the *'scat- 
terers" as they were now affectionately called in the 
middle West. 

In that remarkable first pamphlet which Katterby 
got out for the public, there was a brief account of 
his career. The publication contained some testi- 
monials from famed persons, such as Th. de Lace 
Bimbelow, author of stories of highly refined amour 
who was enabled, he wrote, to compose many 
chapters of melodious prose with the stimulating aid 
he derived from the wonderful pills; and Prof. 
Gimmel, of Dass University, who swore by all the 
anthropoid baboons whose bones he had disinterred 
in China that life without the Katter-Scatter pills for 
him would be vacuous; and Doctors Babb and 
Cohen,* who testified to the power of the Katterby 
product, with communicating warmth. 

The pamphlet was a success, the first edition of it 
speedily exhausted. Book collectors broke into 
private houses armed with jacknife and sandbag and 
deliberately pilfered the precious work. At public 
auctions that were conducted under the frightened 
inspection of bepistoled policeman, the pamphlet — 

* Authors of "Worry: Its Cure;" "An Exhaustive In- 
quiry Into Goiter and Its Alarming Prevalence among 
Respectable Families;" etc. 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 19 

in its pale green covers the cynosure of all eyes, the 
darling of all hearts — drew high bids from fab- 
ulously wealthy men. Those who failed to add the 
unique bit of literature to their possessions straight- 
way expired of disappointment. Today a possessor 
of the first edition or of the eighth — of which I 
shall presently sing — dare not proclaim his proud 
proprietorship lest he be immediately waylaid, his 
body mutilated and deftly dropped into the con- 
veniently nearest streetsewer, and his private library 
ransacked. 

The following year Katterby moved with his wife, 
two daughters and business to Chicago, w^here he 
planned to concentrate on the manufacture of his 
pills for all. 



CHAPTER II 

Katterby expanded mentally and socially in the 
next ten years. His factories in the West Side of 
Chicago were augmented from time to time until on 
June 24, 1898, when he and I first met, he owned and 
operated fourteen ten-story buildings that occupied 
fifty acres of a sixty-acre tract of ground. Twelve 
thousand men and women toiled conscientiously 
in this monstrous beehive and daily produced in- 
numerable cartons-full of Katter-Scatter pills. In 
1898 his fame was secure, his career a matter of 
human history. Prodigous was his publicity ex- 
penditure. No matter where you might be of a 
day, in Calcutta or Buenos Aires, in London, San 
Francisco or in Paris, at the North Pole or the South 
Pole, billboarded lithographs or newspaper advertise- 
ments familiarly reminded you of "What Ponce de 
Leon Missed' %• of "The Infant's Delight''; of that 
which "Makes Grandfather Happy." Often were 
you cautioned to add a Katter-Scatter pill to your 
meals. These kindly notices were printed in that 
language you happened to be using. 

One of the Katterby buildings was a printing 
establishment manned every day, year in and year 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 21 

out, by three eight-hour shifts of advertisement- 
writers and translators, stenographers, proofreaders, 
printers, pressfeeders, binders, shippers, and others. 
From this building alone were shipped trainioads of 
books, pamphlets, folders, letters, cards, and similar 
matter that contained pill-literature. These were 
printed in American, in English, French, German, 
Spanish, and Portuguese; in Polish, Hungarian, 
Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Armenian, 
Gaelic, and Yiddish: in all tongues, minor as well 
as major. 

Another Katterby building contained a restaurant 
used exclusively by the employees; still another was 
subdivided into bathrooms, gymnasiums, music halls, 
classrooms and laboratories. Firsthand courses were 
given in various departments of human knowledge 
by genuinely equipped teachers. No person could 
work for Katterby and not show aptitude in the 
study of the natural sciences, or in sociology, or in 
the useful and the fine arts. The employees were 
given their choice of studies in this thrice-blessed 
school. One could be a linguist, but not a philolo- 
gist; a student of economics but not an economist. 
One could study music and even become a practical 
musician, but no instruction was there for him who 
aspired to a professional career. One could study 
chemistry, but could not specialize on chemical com- 
binations that evolve explosive force. The student 



22 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

was directed in the appreciation of literature, but 
was not encouraged to eject literary expression. 
One could, one was urged in fact to, study the mani- 
fold functionings of the human body, but never to 
become a metaphysical anatomist. One could learn 
many things. Everyone had to read, write and speak 
the American tongue individually and explicitly. 
For, as Katterby once put it: "Teach a chap to 
know the printed and spoken word, and he may 
learn to discern the truth under the lies in which 
it is usually buried." 

It was also customary to omit the prefixes "Mr." 
"Mrs." and "Miss." The women in the lactose 
laboratories addressed their forewomen by their sur- 
names, as did the men in calling upon their own de- 
partment managers. 

It was to meet Katterby that I presented my letter 
of introduction to his secretary the morning of June 
24, 1898. It was hard to arrange the meeting, and 
had I not twitched Katterby's coatsleeve as he passed 
by in the reception room I would have lost my in- 
tei-view. For — then I knew it not — Katterby did 
not esteem the intellectual honesty of newspaper men 
and professional writers. He stared as I explained 
my mission : 

"I'm from The Semicolon office and I want a few 
rem^arks from you advising young men to work hard 
that they may prosper in life. ' ' 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 23 

Katterby smiled and said kindly, **I usually advise 
young men to work hard that their employers may 
prosper. But you may tell your editor to smell with 
his own nose, if you wish." 

"I shall do nothing of the kind. I need the job." 

"You appear to need a job. Well, come with me 
and we'll chew the rag." 

We sat in his office and talked and talked and 
talked. Or rather he talked while I listened. He 
sat in a swinging rocking armchair and his feet at 
times pointed upward from his desk. Occasionally 
he gesticulated, or, as he smilingly explained the 
movements of his hands and arms, underlined his 
important remarks. I remember his abrupt ex- 
planation of his change of mind about talking with 
me: "You interested me because you need a shave, 
a decent suit of clothes, a new hat, shoes, and still 
you seem to be self-sufficient." 

I told him I was very comfortable, and elaborated 
the theory that the average student of human activity 
has little time for such social details as fine dress. 

Said KATTERBY: So you profess an interest in 
human activity! Why? Are you a misanthrope? 

I : Our surroundings, and that evanescent thing 
we term personality, heighten the stature of people 
far beyond their true outlines. You, you tell me, 
are a philosopher. You at times reason things out 
and achieve the illusion of detachment from all this 



24 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

exaggeration. You are — for the moment, remem- 
ber — beyond the ineluctable matter that really com- 
prises you and me and every organism in the world. 
You are, for the moment, capable of wisdom. You 
do not faint with admiration for your own talents. 
You convey your most exalted utterances in the fa- 
miliar language of creatures with whom you would 
talk neither subtly nor formally, but intelligently 
and kindly. During that moment you have the 
truest wisdom of the human race. 

KATTERBY (smiling ironically): What is 
your candid opinion of me this very moment ? 

I : It is candid . . . You say that the mak- 
ing of pills is your serious social enterprise. Of 
course there is no such thing. But let us call it 
that. Tell me, to be candid, why you manufac- 
ture — 

KATTERBY (ponderously) : "For the World's 
Stomach." 

I : Seriously . . . 

KATTERBY: Seriously, to capture the im- 
agination of people. Of course people before me 
have thought of appealing to human intelligence by 
way of their carry-alls. And yet, can you tell me 
how many persons have been appealed to effectively 
in this fashion ? Can you, without looking carefully 
into the matter, state how many persons think only 
when their stomachs are happy? You must admit 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 25 

that I who am successful and a philosopher have 
done noble work for our race. 

I : If it gives you pleasure, I admit that you have 
done well very modestly. 

KATTERBY: It doesn't, but I want the 
admission. 

I: You make me laugh. 

KATTERBY: Thank you. I have a sense of 
humor. I am a humorist. A humorist is any per- 
son who has been able to laugh at his social insigni- 
ficance. I have laughed. But you must have roared 
often into your sleeve: you are a professional writ- 
ing man. 

I: I haven't stopped laughing; that's the point. 
But you are a manufacturer 

KATTERBY : I 'm afraid I have outworn the 
novelty [he grinned] of my singular position in the 
world. 

I : Do you expect to find mental security for the 
rest of 5'our life in that phantasy which literary men 
classify as intellectual skepticism? 

KATTERBY: If you wish to put it that way. 
But a chap can be associated with some human 
arrangement and still be able to increase his perspec- 
tive. I know this: I have never consciously 
deceived myself [he smiled]. 

I : Nor has any one, for that matter ; not con- 
sciously. Yet how often most of us deceive our- 



26 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

selves. If we were conscious of our aims, and could 
express our conceptions more freely we would not 
be so miserable as we are. I of course try to find 
my way about in the world, and I hope I shall never 
be the victim of circumstances like those which de- 
ceived Old Man Johnson. — Johnson, you may care 
to know, was an aged copyreader in the office of 
The Semicolon. For years he had deprived him- 
self of the ordinary comforts of our civilization in 
order to increase his bank savings. He wanted to 
cherish the last few years he imagined were left to 
him in some quiet countryplace, where he could re- 
lax — far from the city's distractions — in bucolic 
friendships, read harmless old books, warm his de- 
composing bones in the summer sun, near the winter 
fireplace. So he scrimped and saved and scrimped 
and saved and presently died. He had cheated his 
body of nourishment in order to satisfy his dearest 
wish. He had asked more from his indifferently fed 
and poorly clad organism than he had given. And 
his banksavings were expended in an elaborate 
funeral and a banquet which the landlady of his 
horrible roominghouse tendered to her friends. So 
you see, this old man had consciously vitiated his 
reactions to the illusion that was his environment. 
He had defied it to master him. . . . He had a nice 
funeral. 

KATTERBY: We all defy our circumstances. 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 27 

The most successful man, no matter how rich or 
wise or healthy, can not be master of his fortune. 
I knew a man who was wealthy, but not wise; 
shrewd, yes, but fatuous about his physical powers. 
He was very old. His name was James Wright and 
he never laughed at himself, not even privately. He 
was very unhappy when he had to confirm with his 
signature his last will and testament. His name he 
wrote out in a flux of emotion. In his will he had 
set down the details of the revenge he sought to 
bring upon the conditions, or whatever-it-is that you 
call it, that had made of him in his old age an howl- 
ing nincompoop. He was sure that he had been 
atrociously deceived by his young wife. Very 
bitter he was about it. He should have known that 
he had only himself to kick for his pains. A few 
months before he had met a girl who leased an 
apartment in one of his North Side buildings. The 
old chap took an interest in her and in the study 
she was making of the drama business. Finally he 
asked her to marry him. This alarmed his sister 
and his broker, his lawyer and his chauffeur, his chef 
and his butler, the members of his privately endowed 
Morals Inspection Brigade for the Safety of Our 
Kindergarten, and the director of his pet Home for 
Fallen and Wayward Boys of More Than Seventy 
Years. They evidently had planned for the 
future on the strength of his good will and his un- 



28 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

expected marriage frightened them. They knew 
that he couldn't possibly live much longer. They 
must have thought that James Wright was too old 
to many even though he had not married before. 
Well, he had money, houses, social opportunities of 
a kind for the young woman, and in the end he had 
his way. He married her. For a few days he was 
proud to be the husband of so comely and vigorous 
and healthy a creature as she. But he had not con- 
sidered his own limitations. The nurturing of his 
physician had inspired him with much confidence 
in his physical energy (although his chemical re- 
sources were virtually exhausted), and you may 
imagine his bad temper when he realized now that 
he was married he had better get ready to die. He 
had planned, this silly old man, to challenge the 
tissues of his composition. He found himself ditched 
instead. He swore that he had been cheated; that 
his wife had married him only for his money and 
that, all in all, he was getting the dirty end of the 
deal. How to keep his lands and houses and money 
from his wife absorbed his enfeebled intelligence. 
He wanted to trick her out of his estate. In his 
will he stipulated that she was not to marry again 
within ten years after his death; that she was to 
abstain from friendship of any nature with any 
male person in that time; that on each anniversary 
day of his death she was to place on his grave a 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 29 

bouquet of flowers. Soon after he had put all that 
into his will, he down and died. His cynical phy- 
sician, who had already been intimate with the 
young widow, ascribed the death to pernicious 
anaemia. On every anniversary day, the physician 
and the widow motor to the exclusive and fashion- 
able cemetery where James Wright is crumbling 
away and the young widow waits in the motor car 
while the physician drops flowers over the grave of 
the dead. 

I : That's quite a story. From the French ? 

KATTERBY: No. So you are a student of 
human activity. I hope that some day the patholo- 
gists will treat clinically those whose realism is ob- 
jective and therefore impossible. But let me take 
you through the factories and show you how the 
Katter-Scatter pills are made; the patrons to the 
world's stomach, the inevitable consequences of in- 
evitable factors of inevitable — . 



CHAPTER III 

The elaborate mansion on Lake Shore Drive was 
a concession to Mrs. Katterby and her daughters, 
Margaret and Elizabeth. While Katterby was 
busy exploiting his pills, his wife sought distinction 
among members of the wealth-exclusive circles. The 
recognition she desired heaped up obligations that 
annoyed her constantly. But for her daughters she 
would never have tried to establish her family in 
''society." Katterby observed her petulance with af- 
fectionate irony and made no attempt to aid her. 
Her struggles with the complexities with which she 
was involved gained his sympathy. He longed for 
the simplicities of former days, which he and his 
wife had enjoyed. Only the insistent demands by 
the girls for ''social" opportunities influenced him 
to purchase the esteem, as he termed it, of "society" 
people. Katterby was very fond of his daughters, 
especially of Elizabeth. He relaxed in companion- 
ship with them and had much joy in their spirited 
interests. 

When I began to visit Katterby at his sumptuous 
residence, Margaret Katterby was twenty, Elizabeth, 
eighteen. The former had already been inoculated 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 31 

with a superficial knowledge of life, dispensed by an 
expensively conducted private school. She was a 
pleasant, mentally vacuous creature. Her sole ac- 
complishment, piano-playing, she displayed only 
when she wanted to impress people. Elizabeth, al- 
ways about the house, was prone to evade personal 
duties on the grounds of her frailty. Neither of 
the sisters was physically attractive; nor, for that 
matter, were their parents. Mrs. Katterby was 
fat. Her youthful indifference to the hygienic nice- 
ties had been a potent factor in the protuberance 
of her abdomen (a fault too common in women 
who have been circumscribed mentally and physi- 
cally by domestic work). But the early days of 
floorscrubbing in Sacaston had not robbed her of 
her cheerfulness. She had never indulged in any 
prolonged cerebral activity and her sympathies were 
intelligent. Katterby called her "Ma," and when 
playfully inclined, thumped her shoulder and told 
her she was a fat old girl but his sweetheart never- 
theless. She delighted in the sentiment and he was 
glad to make her happy. 

Katterby himself, as I could have told you before, 
was of medium height, slenderly fashioned, and 
endowed with unccmm.on energy. He expended 
little superfluous motion. If he wanted to reach 
for something he managed invariably to get it with 
less effort and in less time than many men would 



32 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

ordinarily consume. Hardly ever did he have to 
go out of his way to execute self-appointed tasks. 
This economizing of effort was characteristic of him. 
But I should like to tell here of my first visit to 
Lake Shore Drive: 

The doubledoors of the building were drawn 
back and as I entered a large hall I was slightly sen- 
sitive to the depreciatory inspection which Mrs. Kat- 
terby's butler conferred upon me. Katterby him- 
self appeared and welcomed me heartily. He 
shouted at the doorway of the drawing room for 
"Ma" and for the girls. Within a few minutes 
we were seated comfortably chatting in a circle 
formed by our chairs. 

We dined simply and well. The memory of 
Katterby's wines is very pleasant. Margaret Kat- 
terby declined the port which the butler served but 
Elizabeth drank freely, and became talkative. Pres- 
ently Katterby led me into his library. 

His collection, from which I often removed de- 
sired volumes, comprised, on the one hand, many 
works obviously of a literary character. On the 
other hand there were numerous works of a critical 
and scientific import. I could not get Katterby 
to discuss books objectively. When I brought the 
topic into our conversation he asked me to forgive 
him for being impervious to the appeal which books, 
as books, could make. "To me," he said, "with few 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 33 

exceptions, books are meretricious first aids in the 
stirring business of straightforward living. It is 
true that I am fond of the writings of a few literary 
men. But I seek them out only when I want the 
simplest sort of diversion, the diversion I could 
never get in any native theater, unless I chance to 
see some good dancing. I like Mark Twain, for 
instance, the big man of American letters. Other- 
w^ise, a book that is to consume my time and atten- 
tion must contain some information about natural 
phenomena, or about the gains we human beings 
have made, or fancy we have made, in our ever- 
lasting struggle with the forces in the universe. Or 
else books should be imbued with the charm of per- 
sonalities that are too rare in my own social sphere. 
Science, a little literature, and that's about all. No 
philosophers for me. No philosophy can ever be 
written dov/n. Never fear: the time will come 
when the literary tradition will mark the tomb- 
stone of the human race's childhood." 

"That's one way of looking at it," I said. "At 
least it is reassuring to find that you can be emo- 
tional about something." 

He smiled genially. "Literature, in the main, 
has all its material centered upon man's emotions. 
And only limitedly. But the investigating of nat- 
ural forces, or, to use that word which you dread 
so much, ^science,' has no concern with the pic- 



34 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

turization of us human beings in our queer unheed- 
ed antics, but with what is far more essential — 
natural elements. Suppose we consider the work 
of a man like Th. de Lace Bimbelow, that wonder- 
ful writer, people call him, of vigorous love stories. 
His characters seem always to be having trouble 
about sex, the most natural and invigorating fact in 
life, if there is a fact in life. Now sex isn't half 
so complicated a problem, if it is a problem, as it 
is complicating. A distinction which increased pub- 
lic knowledge will some day emphasize. But the 
members of the sixty-first generation after us may 
be the first to witness such intelligence manifesting 
itself. And by that time there will be more com- 
plications. But to come back to Bimbelow. There 
he is with his love stories, and here am I, for ex- 
ample — I, who do not write professionally, nor 
wish to, have done more for the human race with 
my Katter-Scatter pills than — ." And Katterby 
laughed immoderately as I raised my hands in mute 
appeal. 

From the diary of Benjamin Katterby, under 
the date July 29, 1898: 

My experiences this day were extremely distract- 
ing. First I had to pay Doctor Branter eight hun- 
dred dollars for his last several examinations of 
Elizabeth. In spite of my anxiety he would not 
say whether my little girl will develop normally. 



THE LATE MR, ICATTERBY 35 

Looks like pronounced neuraesthenia to me. I sup- 
pose it is common for physicians who cater to 
wealthy men to regard them with sardonic eyes. 
That is, provided they possess sufficient intelligence. 
But the pity of it is that I have met but one or 
two who really knows anything worth imparting 
to others, apart from professional interests. 

Then there was that newspaper appropriation. 
I had to increase my space for the next fiscal year. 
Fiscal! (But hush, fond pen!) 

Then my advertising manager wanted my ad- 
vice about dismissing his assistant. There have 
been complaints about this young man from other 
department managers. They say he won't obey 
orders. Still, every time I prowl through the de- 
partment and slip into his office I find one or two 
managers seeking information. A bright young 
man, too active to make his superior feel secure 
about his job. Well, the advertising manager 
talked at length, and perhaps to good purpose. I 
discharged him and promoted his assistant. 

Had some fun today: John Various, the circus- 
performer of the Gospels' circuit, wanted me to 
advertise him in conjunction with the pills. He 
enclosed with his letter a specially written testi- 
monial. He did not forget, of course, to suggest 
that I send him a check for a thousand dollars by 
return mail. He tried to make this suggestion look 



36 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

like a postscript to his letter; like an afterthought. 
Bet a nickel he'll yell and curse me up and down 
his platform when he gets my answer — a sample 
packet of the pills. 

Got home rather late and found Forster waiting 
for me. He wanted money for the campaign fund 
for the Prohibitionists. He swallowed three high- 
balls of my best Old Scotch while I scribbled a check 
for him. A sly cuss is Forster; resourceful, practi- 
cal — at least he says he is — and simply louzy with 
moralistic platitudes. *Tm a plain man, Mr. Kat- 
terby," he says, treating me to the smell of my fine 
Old Scotch fuming up from his throat, "I have 
no pretensions. But we must keep our beautiful 
city free from the vicious and degrading influences 
of liquor." 

Forster is a churchgoer. And of course he has a 
large family. 

N. B. What perplexes me is the sincere praise 
which Forster is always ready to give my pills. 



CHAPTER IV 

By 1899 the pills were firmly fixed in the esteem 
of most people. Professional jesters had exhausted 
all possible sources of material for their more or 
less obvious witticisms. Actors were finally re- 
strained from reiterating the "latest story" about 
the Katter-Scatter product. Vaudeville audiences 
could no longer be tricked into untrammeled laugh- 
ter by ingenious allusions to it. Even newspapers 
omitted all references that were not of a socially 
significant nature. Naively conceived, and charm- 
ingly executed, Katterby's pill-publicity had attained 
household worship. The fame of him and his 
product had multiplied so that both were known 
everywhere. 

Prominent businessmen, professional persons and 
artists made it their pleasure to seek out Katterby 
for a boon companion. At fi... tiiey had ignored 
him. Now they pestered him so that he was 
obliged to participate in many social affairs. No 
banquet was held complete without him; no politi- 
cal gathering, graced not by his presence, attracted 
any attention. His utterances at the public dinner- 
table were usually recorded for posterity in the first 



38 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

page columns of all the leading newspapers. He 
was no longer a national achievement, but an inter- 
national institution. His fame added many burdens 
to those he was protestingly shouldering. **Now 
that I've got so much importance thrust upon me I 
shall have to live up to it in all seriousnes." Then 
he would laugh and proceed verbally to manipulate 
certain facts in a way that would have edified pious 
atheists. 

But he became tired of the speechmaking, of the 
banquets, of the sentimentality. In few of the men 
he encountered did he discern the stufi from which 
come graceful and benevolent philosophizings. No 
member of society appealed to him sufficiently to 
encourage friendship. 

About this time he wrote in his diary: "Now 
they want me to enter political life. I see no need, 
not until I am old and garrulous. And then I 
should consider the matter for the amusement. . . 
I wonder how the philosophers go through their 
several daily motions. They are forever thinking 
in terms of the universe just as I do in terms of the 
human stomach. But I suppose every human pur- 
suit has its own peculiar fascination. . . Have 
just taken a walk about my library. If Lazar 
keeps on grabbing my choicest works he'll soon 
have a respectable library of his own. Funny cuss, 
he. Considers everyone but himself seriously. 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 39 

Must be something back of that pretension. The 
truth is, we all take everything seriously. We 
couldn't live as normally as we do a single minute 
if we didn't. Well, out of all the pretensions of 
matured human beings will some day come the 
things that will be worth while . . . maybe. 
I wonder what has become of the grace that man- 
ifested itself centuries ago in this world of ours." 

Katterby was well liked by women. They ap- 
preciated his homilies. He had a way of making 
his impolitest utterances popular. In mixed com- 
pany he could hold forth on tabooed subjects with 
a freedom that invariably made the men uncom- 
fortable and the women happy. The men often 
had occasion to reflect that a few like Katterby, 
indiscriminately distributed about, would serve to 
unchain many restraints and hurl into Limbo most 
of our valued ideas. 

When Margaret Katterby was married to Se- 
bastian Felly, son of the manufacturer of the Pocket 
Nut-Cracker, the mansion on Lake Shore Drive 
was crowded with guests. Vast bundles of tele- 
grams and letters of congratulation doubled the 
groaning bodies of the mailcarriers. For days and 
days no newspaper but had reference to some detail 
of the wedding. What Margaret Katterby wore at 
church absorbed the passionate interest of every 
other woman. And what Katterby said in connec- 



40 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

tion with the marriage was repeated by clubmen, 
golfers, theater-firstnighters, and bartenders. They 
tapped their foreheads, I imagine, as knowingly as 
did their forefathers hundreds of years ago, to in- 
dicate how quickly the "queer druggist of Sacas- 
ton" w^as losing his sanity. Katterby merely com- 
mented on the ease with which ministers earn their 
livelihoods, but then he did it tolerantly. When 
he "gave his daughter-bride away" he was heard to 
mutter something about repeating one of our oldest 
barbarisms. 

He sought me in his library, where I was relax- 
ing bibulously in honor of the occasion. He told me 
at entertaining length just what he thought of the 
ceremony we call marriage. Katterby on the Pro- 
fane Things of Life was a treat. He could enjoy his 
own dissertations, and was never afraid to stop in 
the course of an anecdote to share another's pleas- 
ure in a witticism of his. 

"What," he inquired, "do you think of Mar- 
garet's male partner — Sebastian Felly?" 

"He has a quaint and curious name," said L 

"Do you think he will be happy with her?" 

"Do you think she will be happy with him?" 

"I do not know, of course, but in the role of a 

happy father, whatever that is, I ought to express 

some anxiety. Ma has already done it, now I'm 

supposed to chip in and maintain the integrity of 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 41 

the family. Just the same, Sebastian Felly appeals 
to me. He has no ideas about life, he still obeys 
his father and he is a good dancer." 

"Man can ask no more," I said. And he sug- 
gested that we take a walk. So we left the silent 
house (Mrs. Katterby and Elizabeth were no 
doubt exchanging confidences upstairs, now that 
Margaret had deserted them), and as we strode 
northward along the lake shore we discussed the 
possible effects of further civilizing of the human 
race on the institution of marriage. 

We considered also the accidents that determine 
the conduct of us all. Had not Doc Buder been 
sick when no other cure but that intended for 
Jackson's cattle was handy, Katterby might not 
have become renowned. He and I agreed that 
much fine human material has passed from birth 
to death without ever becoming expressive. "Chance 
acquaintanceships have made as well as marred 
many a human prospect," said Katterby, cheerfully. 

We approached a nearsighted man whom I recog- 
nized as The Professor. He was cleaning a pair 
of spectacles with a two dollar bill and grumbling 
noisily. I introduced Katterby and he shook his 
head in indifferent acknowledgement as he com- 
pleted his task. He stared fiercely the while he 
smoothed out his two dollar bill, and then he said: 

"Your name is Katterby and you are not a 



42 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

cheap organism. Your pills have often served me 
well. I have here" — and he drew from his pocket 
a small pamphlet — ''all the wisdom of the world, 
embodied in a few pithy sayin's by me friend and 
master, Bilious Head, whose illustrious disciple you 
behold when you gaze into me wanderin* eye and 
start with surprise. I'm quite sure, me friend, you 
will prize this little book o' mine, and I'm askin' 
only ten cents for it to pay me back for the cost of 
printin'. Thank you. Let me hope to see again 
your smilin' face with cheerful grace." 

We resumed our walk and I told Katterby of 
The Professor, who had come from England and 
was soapboxing at streetcorners and peddling sec- 
ondhand philosophical concepts. 



CHAPTER V 

The memorable eighth edition of the Katter- 
Scatter pamphlet was issued in 1900, as were sever- 
al other literary contributions to the pillmaker's sci- 
ence. Among the mediums of publicity which Kat- 
terby employed were bibles, whose flyleaves and 
endsheets he had covered with pill-advertisements. 
He supplied a large number of hotels w^ith them, 
and explained his purpose in doing so in a letter 
to the hotelkeepers : 

"The history of how two traveling salesmen of 
the old school founded the famed organization that 
today supplies hotelrooms with copies of our beau- 
tiful book of fictions, is familiar, and need not be 
redetailed to you. But in order to augment, so to 
speak, the highly diverting narratives of the origin- 
al, I have added some choice snatches of prose, 
spontaneously evolved from the grey matter of 
shrewd professional phrasejugglers. The words on 
flyleaf and endsheet will console the weary traveler 
as he reclines in bed smoking his favorite stogie. 
They will reconcile him to the hardships of his 
calling and bring peace into his soul. Artfully 
soothed, our travelsore creature will unthinkingly 



44 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

continue his reading into the sonorous pronounce- 
ments of Genesis. And one purpose of our Katter- 
Scatter pills will have been attained. Once again 
will the bible be the fond companion of him who 
seeks 'the beacon lights, the harbor home'." 

The hotelkeepers were glad to have bibles for 
nothing. 

But it was the sumptuous eighth edition of the 
pamphlet that captivated human hearts. Only fifty 
thousand copies were struck off, on vellum, bound 
in richest morocco, with handsome burned-in title- 
lettering. This edition was dedicated by Katterby 
to his daughter Elizabeth, of whom he was so fond. 
Scarcely had the edition been placed in the hands 
of Katter-Scatter pill-distributors when every copy 
but the one on the library shelf of the Katterby 
Factories, Inc. was hidden in the recesses of private 
collections. You have been told what happened 
when the first edition of the pamphlet went out of 
print. Imagine the frenzy of people who couldn't 
get a copy of the eighth edition. It was indeed a 
precious bit of bookmaking. Titillating as was the 
appearance, the contents were even more desirable. 
The prefatory note, set in runic type, was a racy bit 
of prose, gemmed with epithets. 

One turned the first page and encountered a 
testimonial from Th. de Lace Bimbelow, the fa- 
mous novelist. Of the numerous woodcuts that 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 45 

adorned the delectable pages of the volume, three 
had been fetchingly placed among the verbal felici- 
ties of Mr. Bimbelow. One of the woodcuts depict- 
ed the author at his desk, his head grievously rest- 
ing upon his folded arms, himself the picture of 
misery, the half-covered foolscap sheet nearby be- 
traying its fond parent's mental hiatus. The second 
woodcut showed the author in the position of one 
who is desperately swallowing a Katter-Scatter pill, 
and the third cut presented him furiously traversing 
with his pen wide sheets of papers. Captions there 
were, too, reading, ''Before Taking"; "Taking," 
and "After Taking." The testimonial which the 
grateful man indited is presented in full: 

My dear Mr. Katterby: 

Permit a long suffering man to Inscribe these 
lines, expressive of his gratitude, in the behalf of 
my complete recovery. Now, thanks to your won- 
derful pills, I am again enabled daily to produce 
a thousand words, which you will not gainsay, of 
literature of a far higher order than in the days 
when I knew not the Katter-Scatter pills. 
Faithfully yours, 

Th. de Lace Bimbelow 

When Katterby's advertising manager wanted to 
parse this letter and harness its unhitched sentences 



46 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

the plllmaker ordered him to let the words lie as 
they had been allowed to fall. 

Professor Gimmel of Dass University was pic- 
tured in a romantic hat and foreign attire superin- 
tending the efforts of a number of men who were 
pressing their shovels into the soil of China's bosom 
and turning up countless fossils of animals that 
must have roamed China woods and hills in a pre- 
historic age. Professor Gimmel's face eloquently 
betrayed his physical torment. The second wood- 
cut presented him going through the motions of an 
actor; therein he was violently refusing to inspect 
an anthropoid toe. But in the third picture — ! 
His communication of approval follows: 

My dear Katterby, 

By what strange process have you transmuted 
the ingeniousness of your brain and the cascara 
bark of our California buckthorn into this bless- 
ing? I do not really know what I should do with- 
out it now that I have tried it. I believe that ex- 
istence for me would be futile, my years of study 
in the science of anthropology no longer of value, if 
I were to be left to shift among the rocks of life 
without your energizing pills. You are an unusual 
man, I must say, and deserve high rank among the 
serious scientists of this age. With the best wishes 

(Signed) Olaf Base Gimmel. 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 47 

The activities of Doctors Babb and Cohen, of 
the faculty of Befuddleya College, were also shown 
in pictures, their enthusiastic tribute in text. More 
impressive perhaps than their letter were the cuts, 
which revealed, first, a laboratory wherein Doctors 
Babb and Cohen could be seen stooped over the 
prostrated body of an old man, whose thyroid gland 
they were critically inspecting. It seemed as 
though Babb was giving his impressions to Cohen 
who appeared to be jotting them down with his 
fountainpen. 

In the second picture the professors were seen 
gracefully depositing a Katter-Scatter pill in the 
opened mouth of the patient. In the third, both 
gentlemen were bowing modestly to the reader with 
their glistening eyes — glistening no doubt with 
triumph — under their lowered heads. 

Of much similar matter was the amazing eighth 
edition composed. And many luckless nonowners 
impotently committed deeds of a desperateness that 
was appalling, in vain efforts to procure copies of 
the book. 



CHAPTER VI 

The professors of the University of Dass were 
uniformly absentminded. Bright men who joined 
the faculty soon lost themselves in the labyrinthine 
methods used to impart knowledge. The professors 
were so absentminded in fact, that many students 
who registered at the university were enabled to 
loaf at ease for four years. Saltpirate Pete, angel 
to the institution, had more than once threatened it 
with immediate and utter extinction. Every time he 
recollected how narrowly the university had missed 
being named after him, he would bluster himself 
into a hemorrhage, and ordered then to take a trip, 
would return more truculent than ever. How the 
university came to be so singularly named is worth 
the telling: 

On the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone 
Professor Gimmel, a vigorous man born somewhere 
in Ulster County, read his dedicatory speech from 
typewritten notes. As he paused, for dramatic ef- 
fect, to pronounce the institution for ever the Salt- 
pirate Pete University, a small boy's plaintive voice 
arose from the attentive crowd: "Ma, dass I go 
oflE 'n' play?" 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 49 

The Professor of Anthropology went on solemnly, 
''And I do name thee Dass, O bright star of the 
intellectual firmament," There was much confu- 
sion, of course. Saltpirate Peter, who had been tak- 
ing in the ceremonies from his automobile, col- 
lapsed. When he regained consciousness, he vowed 
that he would drink the blood of the Olaf Base 
Gimmel. He found the forgetful professor in a 
low saloon which defied the Sunday closing law, 
and the sight of the professor's beard deeply im- 
mersed in a tall seidel of beer, banished for the time 
Saltpirate Pete's thoughts of vengeance. In fact he 
joined the professor, and did so well that for the 
next three days there was no beer for the regular 
customers. So Dass University it had been named, 
and Dass it is today. 

One brilliant Sunday afternoon, before a large 
gathering of male and female graduates. Professor 
Gimmel with much elaborateness presented as 
speaker of the occasion, Benjamin Katterby. The 
pillmaker was applauded roundly as he strode for- 
ward on the platform and patiently awaited the 
cessation of all sound before beginning his address. 
Then he proceeded to liberate his ideas on men and 
women, on their interests in life, on life itself, on 
all sorts of jokes, on Katter-Scatter pills of course, 
and so on. That which follows you would have 
cared most to have preserved: 



50 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

''Diligence is a human weakness which usually 
we prefer to detect in others. In a workingman it 
is a virtue and his salvation; in a capitalist a vice. 
But all virtues are questionable; all are simply the 
obligations which the strong have foisted upon the 
helpless. Vices, in brief, are the preferences of 
our constrained bodies. So you will not begin your 
matured period of existence with a predetermined 
sense of what many grownup people are still call- 
ing Values.' Some of you, it is possible, will find 
work at the Katterby Factories, Inc., and there you 
will of course be given an opportunity to work for 
the salvation of the human anatomy. Maybe, some 
of you will enter heartily into the spirit that pre- 
vails at the plant, a spirit that is evocative, at least, 
of better things than often one meets with today. 

"Again, some of you may embark upon the peril- 
ous not to say plebian voyage of marriage. Well, 
that is one of the fatalities of life, and I dismiss it 
with the feeling that you will handle the situation, 
when it confronts you, as relatively as possible. 
The only objection I have to marriage Is that it 
Includes too many relationships. Marriage should 
have nothing to do at any time with fathers and 
mothers and brothers and cousins and sisters and 
aunts and uncles and churches and lawyers and 
doctors and money. Marriage, as we practice the 
business today, is a condition of affairs wherein 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 51 

the male, having gotten him a female and paraded 
her for a time as his greatest social decoration, gives 
her her freedom to become more or less of an eye- 
sore; just as he eventually becomes a Gout. The 
domesticated female of today is simply an automa- 
ton whose exercises are limited by the size of her 
apartments. The domesticated male creature, daily 
to be observed on city streets, is a conservative and 
suspicious, publicly moral and privately childish 
chap whose sanctioned authority over his wife is 
one of his degenerating influences. His sole esthet- 
ic he achieves when he goes into a corner with a 
member of his species and swaps what are called 
dirty stories. Ask him to recite a poem, or ex- 
press what appreciation he can indulge in of the 
wonders of nature. Ask him to tell you his con- 
ceptions of God, or of morality, or of the freedom 
which women seek. To all he will say that you 
are a confounded atheist. He will grow solemn 
and babyish and he will whisper in your ear that 
you will be blasted in hell if you do not mend your 
ideas. 

"But he knows all there is to know of public fash- 
ions and customs, and particularly of politics. He 
will tell you eagerly why you should interest your- 
self in the political aspirations of some egregious 
saloonkeeper or wardheeler. With solemn wonder 
he will explain his world of socialized authority. 



52 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

He will hold discourse with you on the superiority 
of certain ethnically separate divisions of the hu- 
man race, over other divisions. 

"Enough! Hear now my litany : From all who 
believe in a hereafter, or in a Divine Providence, in 
moralistic distinctions, in mythologies, in the human- 
izing power of literary expression; who feel them- 
selves upheld by scarifiers of natural phenomena, 
who must have laws to keep them from becoming 
overly drunk, sexually abnormal, overly wealthy 
through the protection of organized institutions, 
overly wise through unconventional studies, — from 
all such creatures O my Good Friends Deliver Me." 

The graduates and faculty did not understand a 
word of what Katterby was saying and applauded 
enthusiastically. And it is proper here to add that 
upon Katterby was conferred the honor of an ap- 
pointment to the Chair of the Human Graces as 
Conducted by the University of Dass. 



CHAPTER VII 

Katterby's social prominence could not long tem- 
per the force of his expressions. The discord be- 
tween them was reflected within the next few 
years in the undisguisedly bitter treatment which 
he received from prominent and powerful men who 
had sought his friendship. His industrial power 
and perplexingly accurate reflections on the life 
about him made him increasingly unpopular. Grad- 
ually requests for his attendance at public func- 
tions ceased. This pleased him inordinately. Years 
ago he had suspected that his growth would bring 
upon him not only the adulation of industrial co- 
equals, but later, their abjuration of him and his 
what they termed fantastic ideas. But for his in- 
fluence over the mediums of publicity he would 
have been mercilessly depreciated as a public asset. 
And he was shrewd enough to increase and not 
lessen, his advertising appropriations. Many news- 
papers and magazines at one time or another were 
liberally supported by the money that came from 
Katterby's adroitly manoeuvred advocacy of his 
cure for human stomachs. Once humorously yet 
sincerely esteemed, he was now a power feared by 



54 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

other powers in the field of business. But his em- 
ployees swore by him. 

There was a good cause for the enmity which 
he and his daily activities aroused. His educational 
aids had made his factories very popular with imag- 
inative workmen. All sought employment under 
him. No other industry was there where employer 
showed such munificent regard for employee. Hence 
the hatred for Katterby by industrial captains. 

But the pillmaker treated lightheartedly the pro- 
nounced change of his fellows' attitude. He no 
doubt would have continued his journey through 
the span of years that remained to him, exercising 
his faculties of humor and tolerance, had not his 
enemies revealed their malevolence so provokingly! 

When Mrs. Katterby succumbed unexpectedly to 
pneumonia and Katterby was shocked as never 
before in his life, he got not one word of condolence 
from the members of his own economic caste. This 
it was that puzzled him. I sat with him in one 
of the living rooms of the Lake Shore Drive man- 
sion, through his nightlong watch over the com- 
posed body in the modest black coffin that lay upon 
an especially provided support. Katterby said not 
a word to me, nor to Elizabeth when she came into 
the room and pressed her flushed and beteared face 
against his shoulder seeking comforting utterances. 
I repicture mentally how he disengaged one hand 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 55 

from under his lowered head and passed his arm 
about her. He seemed to hug her with an air of 
bitterness. 

For several weeks after the funeral at Sacaston, 
for Katterby had his wife buried in Sacaston Ceme- 
tery, he remained at the Chicago residence and con- 
sented to see only a few persons. 

He remained taciturn the rest of his life. He 
who had never been harsh was now harsh and 
cynical. One day, in his library, while he sat 
swinging his short nervous legs to and from his 
tipped armchair he dispelled our silence, saying, 
"My emotional outbursts have made thinking very 
difficult for me. But I am able clearly to realize 
that I who could reflect on birth, on death; who 
tried honestly to gratify my curiosity with intelli- 
gent reasoning, am helpless in the face of this ele- 
mental fact which has so suddenly struck me and 
made me numb. I can now plainly see myself as 
one of the pathetic creatures who suggested so much 
material for cogitation to me. There's no sense in 
complaining, but we worldlings with our ambitions 
and our strivings and our daily activities are shriv- 
eled up vvnth terrific simplicity by the fact of Death. 
Helpless mannikins, we. 

"I find it hard to believe that my wife is dead," 
he added, presently. "She and I occupied so much 
of each other's interests from childhood on. When 



56 THE LATE MR. I-CATTERBY 

I in my youth began to pursue her she was helping 
her father to run a music goods store on Gower 
Street. I had won my certificate as a druggist 
from the State University and was getting the actual 
experience in an old drugstore across the street from 
my wife's place. 

"The day we were engaged a fossil was extracted 
from the bank of the Sacaston River near Hines- 
ville, about seven miles north of Sacaston. The 
local newspaper printed a reproduction of the photo- 
graph that was taken of the vertebrate, which was 
of the Permian period, and had the characteristics 
of some reptilian fish. The form that went to 
press with the cut of the fossil got pied, and in many 
copies of the paper there was a picture of Marthe, 
my wife, directly across the column pica- rule, 
jammed into the picture of the fossil. Marthe's 
portrait had been published with comments on our 
engagement. There was a good deal of talk by the 
superstitious folk and one female croaker told 
Marthe's father that he would do well to call the 
engagement off. Well, Marthe and I didn't wait 
for her father to decide. We hired a buggy, drove 
to Hinesville, and were married there." 

A moment later he said: "Gosh, to be the sim- 
plest fisherman with mainly the weather to worry 
about, maybe. If I had never given that cascara 
to Doc Buder!" The inflection in his voice deep- 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 57 

ened suddenly. ''He's dead too, you know. Quite 
forgot to tell you, didn't 1?" He lounged in his 
chair and resumed the brisk swinging of his short 
legs. "We are the blankest sentimentalists ever. 
I think I can see now why we have to prod one 
another eternally to evoke laughter. . . Pain 
seems gratuitous, or rather, more natural to us. 
But what is the difference between pain and laugh- 
ter? Essentially none. Both are avenues of phys- 
ical release, through which our liberated emotions 
pass helter-skelter, madly, bitterly, or with an air, 
each mannerism indicative of the idiosyncrasies of 
us all. Pain is purely a forewarning of sensation; 
laughter, an after effect of sensation. We can nev- 
er truly laugh and be conscious of our mirth at the 
same time. Wonder what the increase of human 
knowledge will do to both these primal avenues of 
physical release: Refine pain, perhaps. Maybe 
we'll have to develop professional laughers to dis- 
charge emotions we will have lost ownership 
of. . . Why don't you say something? You sit 
there looking at me sympathetically. Fancy ! 

"Did I ever tell you the story of the blindman 
who was lost on a mountainside? Well, he tapped 
about with his stick and made a fuss and soon the 
mythological devil crashed his head through the 
earth and shattered the village at the foot of the 
mountain with the avalanche of forest and rocks 



58 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

which he thus uprooted. The devil was sore. 
'What in hell are you making all this fuss about?' 
he said. *If you're blind, and can't see, pray to 
God. But if you keep on bothering us below I'll 
take you myself.' 

**Said the blindman: 'Aw, go home! I'm all 
right. I got friends; they will look after me.' 

"The devil laughed. 'They will look after me,' 
he mimicked. 'That's the trouble with all you top- 
floor neighbors. You're always raising a rumpus 
over our heads with your everlasting helping of one 
another.' 

" 'Why shouldn't I get help,' said the blindman, 
'I can't see.' 

" 'What you want is Sweetness and Light,' said 
the devil; 'what you get is a little more charity.' 
And the devil stuck out his thumb, fixed the blind- 
man under the fingernail, and disappeared with him 
below." 

Katterby arose: "So don't stare sympathetically; 
that is being charitable. And charity belongs with 
the other crimes. Let's get some fresh air." 



CHAPTER VIII 

Elizabeth Katterby's thirtieth birthday was sim- 
ply celebrated. A dinner in her honor was given 
by her father, at the Lake Shore Drive home. There 
were present, besides Elizabeth and her father, her 
companion, a young woman named Bates, her older 
sister Margaret Felly, the latter's husband, and my- 
self. Dignified expressions of wonder were con- 
ferred upon the gifts Elizabeth had received from 
her relatives. Friends she had none. For the last 
ten years she had lived the life of a recluse at her 
father's Chicago home during the summer and at 
the fruit grove in Florida during the winter. 

She had always been sensitive to influences that 
could never have been physically beneficial. Her 
daily interests appeared to be the reactions of a 
peculiar complex. Able to concentrate on her or- 
dinary needs, she was never thoroughly able to 
realize them. She could not have been, for she 
was prone to encourage tendencies that mechani- 
cally limited her experiences. For the last several 
years, in fact, Elizabeth Katterby had lived in a 
world peopled by phantasms which she herself had 
evolved to take the place of a real world she was 
afraid to live in. 



6o THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

In all things she was naively simple. Her father 
observed her with much concern in the last year 
and more of her life, for she was beginning to talk 
of the strangest hallucinations; of experiences out- 
side of the mental life of normal persons. Katterby 
was afraid that some day he would be hurt through 
her. He never said anything about it but I know 
that he was perturbed by her growing indifference 
to even the ordinary details of life; to the details, 
for instance, of clothes, personal hygiene, mental 
stimulation, and so on. 

Lately she had displayed an air of liveliness that 
danced strangely about her. Miss Bates, her com- 
panion, was an intelligent young woman, not unat- 
tractive, but rather morbid, I thought. One day I 
found her in the arms of Katterby's butler, in the 
darkened corner of the drawing room. She was 
startled by my unpremeditated approach. I left 
the room hurriedly. Although I never spoke of the 
matter to anyone — nor did she negotiate my con- 
fidence — I believe that Elizabeth would not have 
killed herself as she did, nor when she did, had 
Miss Bates been dismissed. 

Elizabeth had formed the habit of retiring short- 
ly after dinner. The arrival of Miss Bates did 
not disturb that habit, for they retired together, to 
pass the hours, as we thought, before bedtime, in 
talk, in reading, in various minor affairs that most 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 6i 

interested them. One evening, not long after the 
birthday party, Katterby sent for his daughter. He 
showed me a new bracelet he wanted to give her. 
He was always bringing things home to her and in 
many ways soliciting her affections. The maid 
who had gone for her returned presently saying that 
she had looked everywhere but could not find her. 

Katterby was not so much surprised as worried. 
The hours passed slowly in the library where Kat- 
terby said he would wait until Elizabeth came home. 
Presently he went upstairs, stayed for a little while, 
and called to me from the staircase. I went up to 
him and we looked about the rooms Elizabeth oc- 
cupied. Everything seemed to be in order. Her 
taste in art, however, was curious. She seemed to 
have specialized on nude figures of an exaggerated 
erotic impulse so overwhelmingly overdone by Con- 
tinental artists in the last decade. A more work- 
able picture of Elizabeth took form in my mind as 
I assembled certain characteristics of hers. Present- 
ly her father and I went downstairs and he asked 
me to sit through the night with him. He added 
that he thought it best for us to stay in the dark, and 
he switched out the electric lights. How long we 
sat there I can not say, for I was sleeping when 
Katterby roughly shook me. Presently I became 
conscious of the swishing of skirts on stairstep edges 
and was by that time fairly alive to what was going 



62 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

on. Katterby then went quietlj^ into the hallway 
and stood listening there. He was extremely 
frightened when he came back. "I heard Eliza- 
beth laugh," he whispered. I was surprised by the 
tone. "Hysterically," he added, with as much sig- 
nificance as he dared at that time convey. I was 
not able to reassure him. 

From that night forward Katterby spent much 
of his time closely watching his daughter. About a 
year passed. The usual interests that filled in Kat- 
terby's existence still fascinated him, although he 
aged rapidly. He would not willingly give up 
further exploitation of his pills. He was not yet 
averse to the playing of new tricks that would 
again excite interest in his product, and I believe 
that in the last few years of his life he tried to 
associate his cure-all for the stomach with more 
necessary social elements; with food, clothes and 
so on. One morning, in his office, he took me into 
his confidence. 

"I was tipped off last night. By a detective," he 
added, shamefacedly. "Well, this anxiety was get- 
ting to be too much. But I want to tell you: I 
followed Elizabeth last night. Some horrible North 
Side dump, a regular hole in the wall, right near 
the lake. You go across the river, turn east, and 
walk two blocks. I was too agitated, I suppose, to 
make a mental note of the place, but it is, I believe, 



THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 63 

what is left of an old fashioned private house. The 
stone steps are jagged and pieces are broken of^, even. 
You have to hang on to a rusty iron railing to get 
into the building. . . 

"I found Elizabeth there with the Bates girl. I 
phoned Dr. B ranter. He came quickly and took 
care of them. Later I shipped the Bates girl back 
to her home. Doc gave Elizabeth some dope, but 
he isn't very cheerful. Frankly, have you suspect- 
ed what's wrong with her?" 

"I have." 

He stared queerly, then said: "Doctor Branter 
told me, an hour ago. He's looking after her now, 
or was, rather, when I left the house. I'm expect- 
ing a telephone call any moment." He lighted a 
cigar and stared with an air of determination at me. 
"I suppose you think I'm worr>'ing m^y head off. 
Well, I am ! But I'm prepared for the worst. I've 
about decided to put Elizabeth in a place where 
she'll be able to move freely about and become sen- 
sitive to fresh air, simple food, and the other de- 
cencies of a blank existence. I'd hate to tell you 
what's wrong with her. But when I think of what 
Elizabeth's gone through, and how she and her en- 
vironment came to grips, it makes me feel like a 
criminal. I wonder how many fathers and mothers 
feel that way. Or do they ever think of life in that 



64 THE LATE MR. ICATTERBY 

way? Mighty few people really give the matter 
any thought. . ." 

He sat with his hat on, very plainly awaiting com- 
bat with a powerful enemy. I thought of how he 
had looked when his wife died. 

There's no need of repeating what every newspa- 
per printed and revamped for weeks following Eliza- 
beth's suicide. We all know that the moment the 
doctor left her she shot herself in bed, and laughed 
and spat blood about until she could no longer 
breathe. But in the moments that elapsed between 
the time his daughter killed herself and the time 
Katterby was informed there was the most prosaic 
scene you could imagine. Katterby was nervous, 
of course; he expected to learn how Elizabeth was 
getting on. While he remained by the telephone 
he glanced at some letters that required his atten- 
tion. But the instant the bell jangled out he 
dropped his correspondence, and seized the tele- 
phone receiver. I could barely hear . . . 
"shot in bed . . ." and the words broken in by 
sobs of the servant. Very distinctly do I remem- 
ber Katterby, his hat on his ear, his cigar under his 
right forefinger, his sharp jaws opening and closing, 
and then his sudden, half-defiant, half-frightened — 
"What! what the hell are you trying to do? — 
scare me? . . ." 



CHAPTER IX 

Thereafter Katterby kept himself in seclusion. 
He had already transferred his factories to his son- 
in-law, and refrained from further exploitation of 
his pills. Instead, he concentrated on certain botan- 
ical experiments in his Florida grove. The last 
time I saw him he had come to Chicago to wind up 
some business details before going back to the South 
to stay, he told me, until he died. "The chances 
are I shall not live much longer," he said, as we sat 
by the immense fireplace in the library of his home, 
which, by the way, he had given to his daughter 
Margaret. 

"I have gone through a fearfully great number of 
repeated motions, daily. Interesting enough, but 
when a chap is sixty-one, he wants to go fishing, or 
read Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and Izaak 
Walton. . . Not that I do it. There are too 
many people in this world who persist in keeping dead 
things alive. They are forever resurrecting old and 
wornout sentiments, stale retwistings of dead men's 
dead ideas, dead books. . . Why try to revita- 
lize anything that is past and done for? Aren't we 
daily encountering new significations in social and 



66 THE LATE MR. KATTERBY 

natural phenomena? The fact that there are a lot 
of people who can't realize what vital changes are 
continuously going on, means nothing. Imagine! 
We have to go to public forums, or the newspapers, 
when we want to generate an idea or two in order 
to understand one another better. . . 

"People are busy today trying to get America to 
have a national literature, more pronounced, that 
is, than she has had. Well, we've had Whitman, 
and Mark Twain. But who knows anything about 
this?" And he reached for his copy of Carl Sny- 
der's "The World Machine," and began to read 
while the fire crackled and leapt here and there in 
angular flashes. . . 

" 'The individual life is of little consequence to 
the race. The aggregate life of the race seems of 
little consequence to the earth. Billions upon bil- 
lions of coral polyps may materially alter the sur- 
face of the globe. Probably their work v^^ill be of 
more consequence, will have effected greater changes 
in terrestrial conditions, than all that will ever be 
effected by man himself. It may be that the human 
race has yet a long time to run, compared with the 
relative brevity of its past. It may be that human 
achievement has hardly begun. Be that as it may, 
it will one day be finished. 

"So far as we can now perceive, human civiliza- 
tion is but a flutter of consciousness amid the wide 
cycle of life that sweeps through from lichen and 
bacterium to saurian monster and back again. And 
the cycle of life is but an evanescent moment in the 



THE LATE MR. K:ATTERBY 67 

history of the globe. The history of the globe is 
in its turn but an evanescent moment in the cycle 
of the stars ; suns glow for a little time, and planets 
bear the fruitage of plants and animals and men, 
then turn for aeons in a drear and icy lifelessness." 
Katterby stared at me with an ecstatic grin. 
"Isn't that beautiful, you ... ?" 



The End 



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